“What does the MVP say?” – Introducing Karen Tazayan

As the next feature in our MVP interview series, please meet Karen Tazayan!

Karen has been one of the first people to participate in MSDN Translation Wiki. Following are his responses to our prodding questions:

Please tell us a bit about yourself. What is your background?

"I graduated from Informatics and Applied Mathematics faculty at Yerevan State University in 2008, and begun practicing as a web-developer in 2010. Then I used all available resources in order to obtain information on Microsoft development tools, and I read mostly the Russian version of MSDN."

Why did you decide to become a moderator for Russian and spend your free time on this activity?

"Firstly, it is a good way to get new knowledge. Secondly, when I just started to learn about web-development I was not good in English and I used all available resources I could find in Russian - even though I was born in Georgia and lived in Armenia I attended a Russian school - thanks to that, I speak Russian well. Thus, being good in Russian was a good chance for me to get detailed information on the development tools I needed on the Russian MSDN. With this project being launched, I felt I could help other users to get improved and even perfect translations on MSDN. At the time, I realized that I needed to learn English to receive new information in a timely manner: unfortunately, not all current information appears in Russian first. Now I can contribute myself in the community and apply the knowledge I gained before. I remember at the very beginning people also helped me, and it is a pleasure for me to do the same for others. It is a kind of “Thank you” to all those who helped me in the past".

Can you explain what you find most rewarding/interesting about this experience?

"I am always getting news on new features of development tools. I believe that by being active you can get much more knowledge and experience in your expertise than just developing something as a professional. You can find new ideas, you can suggest new ones, and you can discuss all available ones. Thus, I can make the community a better place, enlarge my scope and improve as a professional. Being a developer, you often have to do monotonous job and take on similar projects. The MSDN community lets me mix business with pleasure".

Thank you Karen for all your passion and commitment to technology and language and for your tremendous contribution to our Russian speaking MSDN community!